Listening to Billie by Alice Adams

don’t you make a list of what you need for a year?” she asked once more, wearily.
    “You right, I reckon I should.”
    Outside, in the high noon heat, the slightest breeze had arisen, barely enough to rattle the stiff yellow leaves that had fallen in the gutters. On the other side of San Francisco, along Grant Avenue, preparations were being made for the Chinese New Year. That night there would be a parade, and the sounds of Chinese flutes and mandolins, firecrackers and human shouts would all be audible as far away as Russian Hill, where Eliza’s cottage was. Where, some blocks away, Dr. Branner occupied the penthouse of an expensive new apartment building.
    “I’d really like to go on home,” Eliza said. “You don’t think Kathleen will call?”
    “Naw, you go on. She call, I tell her something.”
    Eliza grinned. “You’re great. Well, have a good weekend. Happy Chinese New Year.”
    “Yeah. You, too.”
    Eliza started down the hall. As she turned the corner toward the bank of elevators, Dr. Branner—Gilbert Branner—was emerging from his office, as she almost knew he would be. He had bent down to lock his door.
    Eliza said, “Oh, hi!” And she achieved with her voice and her stance a remarkable transformation: as he straightened to look at her, he saw suddenly that she was not an office worker (and no one would be more aware of that than Gilbert Branner) but an attractive young blond woman, of a certain education (Eastern), a certain social style.
    “Hi, how are you?” he asked, smiling at her, and achievingat least for himself a vigorous sound of youth. “Hot enough for you?”
    “Unbelievable!”
    The elevator was there, and together they entered and descended, smiling at each other in a companionable and pleased way. Eliza said, “You wouldn’t be driving over to Russian Hill now, would you?”
    “Well, yes, is that where you live, too? I didn’t know—what luck!”
    “Yes, marvelous,” she agreed.
    They walked out toward his open car, with their separate but momentarily coincident plans, into the unnatural, sweltering afternoon.

6 / Phone Calls
and Firecrackers
    By the following Sunday the heat had not abated, nor had the Chinese New Year celebrations appreciably calmed down; to Eliza, alone in her Russian Hill cottage, both the weather and the festive sounds seemed exotic and unreal. And she herself had a curious feeling of suspension, of aimless waiting and undefined need.
    Catherine had gone across town for lunch and a movie with her best friend, and Eliza had a free day, with which, uncharacteristically, she could not decide what to do. And it was as though her vague needs were transmitted into the air as messages—and received by various friends, who telephoned.
    First Kathleen, in her staccato, nonstop way: “That fucking Lawry, do you know he never showed up on Friday? He calls me in the middle of the night, really stoned. All I needed. Doesn’t want to come up or anything, and God forbid we should screw; he just wants to talk. I hung up on him, and then I went out to a bar, you know, the old body-shop routine, but I really couldn’t take it. It made me sick, and so I went on home. Jesus, men. I may give the whole thing up and get a dildo. Well, how are you? What’s that crazy noise at your house?”
    “Firecrackers. Chinese New Year.”
    “Oh, really? And then he called me this morning, like we were friends, asking when he gets to meet my secretary. Not you, Mrs. Quarles,
Miriam.
That rotten bastard got a look at her one time—he’d come by the office to see me and she was strutting across the street, high, probably—and ever since he’s been pestering me, teasing me about her. Shit, I think I will introduce them, they deserve each other. Well, see you tomorrow.”
    Hanging up, Eliza recognized that the conversation had made her extremely uneasy. Although Kathleen’s anger was never directed at her, still Eliza felt and was vaguely frightened by its force; its hostile